Who's running CS4 apps on an older Mac (MDD)?

[ka jowct]

I'm thinking about upgrading Photoshop to CS4: I'm currently on CS2, and am happy with it, but I'd like to have the improved Bridge and RAW capabilities that seem to have been introduced with CS3. I have an old machine and can't easily upgrade that anytime soon. It's a 1.25GHz MDD running Tiger, 2GB RAM, a 256MB Radeon graphics card, and plenty of disk space. Is this worth doing? Would it be painfully slow?

[A-Polly]

Not sure how it compares with your MDD, but I use PhotoShop CS4 and the other Adobe apps on a middle-aged iMac (1.8GHz, 5+ years old, 2GB RAM) without problems. Although I do dream of a new(er), faster machine...one of these days...

[ka jowct]

A new machine would be nice, but it's not going to happen for a while. I'd like to get Aperture, but that's not an option for my old workhorse.

Here's what Adobe says I should have:

* PowerPC® G5 or multicore Intel® processor
* Mac OS X v10.4.11–10.5.4
* 512MB of RAM (1GB recommended)
* 1.6GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on a volume that uses a case-sensitive file system or on flash-based storage devices)
* 1,024x768 display (1,280x800 recommended) with 16-bit video card
* DVD-ROM drive
* QuickTime 7 software required for multimedia features
* Broadband Internet connection required for online services*

[Racer X]

does Adobe give a minimum spec? That's the wish list for best performance I believe.

[ka jowct]

The wish list was the only thing I saw in my brief visit to the Adobe site.

BTW I don't like the site or their current packaging and application icons, and hate what they did to the User Forums.